Timed Essay Question 1

Explain how ongoing audience interaction influences the production of video games. Refer to Minecraft to support your answer.

Minecraft is a good example of how ongoing audience interaction can influence the production of video games. It is the second most successful game of all time behind Tetris, and is described as a virtual world of LEGO that involves following simple instructions in order to play it: explore, mine, and build

The game itself was released in November 2011, with the original intention of it to be a piece of software for programmers and those experienced in computers and was not meant to be commercially viable. However due to it being a sandbox game, and people finding out about it through things such as adverts in comics, reception theory showed that this preferred reading of the game was not the one that was taken up by an active audience. Through the use of platforms such as YouTube and social media like Facebook, many found out about it through streamers and bloggers who began to see it as a game with all sorts of freedom. The company who created it recognised this and began to listen to and incorporate the ideas of the suddenly large fandom that had emerged. 

Many began to see it as a form of escapism or entertainment, due to the sheer number of possibilities that it offered and the fact that you could design and create a world to suit your own tastes and interests. This links into Uses & Gratifications theory and offers several reasons as to why people play this game. Furthermore, as the audience got bigger, it enabled the developers to continue to improve and update the game with various new features that would fit with what the audience wanted. One way that they were able to do this was through social media. They were able to listen to the opinions and advice that their fans offered, and it enabled them to further develop the game and ensure that the audience were content. They were also able to do this through conventions and video game streamers, as both of these had quite large audiences which could make the game appeal to a vast majority of people who perhaps hadn’t considered playing it before.

Also, they were able to target their audience by introducing cross-play across various platforms. Many fans weren’t happy with the fact that they couldn’t play the game with their friends unless they were on the same platform or console, and they wanted a way where they could do this without having to pay for new consoles. So, when cross-play was finally introduces, it gave a vastly positive reaction as it enabled many fans of the game to be able to play with a variety of their friends online, and furthermore could encourage new people to begin playing without all of the extra costs just to be able to play with the people they like. The introduction of merchandise also appealed to a variety of audiences, particularly younger children through the production of plushies and Minecraft LEGO. This also pushed prosumers to create their own versions of the game and merchandise, and also various ways to change the PC game through the use of mods, which also allowed the company to further improve their own updates of it and take ideas from these things to suit the audience. This could be seen as a form of intertextuality. Furthermore, the Microsoft purchase led to better technology within the game, and brought in an ever-expanding audience, which led to further investment in the game.

In conclusion, the success and popularity of a game through audience interaction such as social media, debates, and streamers, allows companies to gain insight on how to improve the game, and also gives them more publicity. This in turn enables makers to reinvent, remarket, and redistribute improved versions of the game to attract more debate and a larger audience, which then repeats this cycle indefinitely.